Earth Networks Puts The Power Of Real-Time Weather Data In The Hands Of Drone Users

Global weather data company Earth Networks demonstrated its weather sensing network and solutions for drone operations at AUVSI Xponential this year. Earth Networks operates the world’s largest network of weather sensors, and its Total Lightning Network is the most extensive and technologically-advanced lightning network in the world.

During Xponential, Earth Networks showed how advanced weather data can transform the efficiency and safety of drone and unmanned vehicle operations. Businesses in oil & gas, construction, government, energy and other weather-sensitive industries leverage advanced weather data analytics for safe site surveying and inspection with UAVs, better response to disasters and emergencies, and protecting their significant investments in drone or UAV assets.

Some of the capabilities advanced weather data can deliver include:

Surface Wind Information – Wind speeds are a critical component to deploying smooth drone-based missions and should be factored in the project planning and deployment phases. Ground-based wind sensing can be used as a proxy to boundary layer wind measurement.

Lightning Data – Knowing where severe weather is anticipated can be used for flight planning, including geo-fencing applications that currently take into account stationary assets and protected air space. Knowing where severe weather can disrupt a mission can augment geo-fencing applications to ensure smooth flight operations.

Claim verification – Insurance companies now use data for claim verification. This could be paired with drone services that are validating claims to provide additional data to support a claim decision.

Advanced weather data is crucial to safeguarding business assets from severe weather. For example, energy companies build outage models utilizing their real-time hourly forecasting for every point in the country. These companies can then plan field teams accordingly, and also plan drone operations to be conducted after the weather event to assess infrastructure damage that may have occurred. By storing site surveys and historical weather data, companies can gain insight into how weather patterns are affecting their projects and critical assets.

Another solution Earth Networks offers is Sferic Maps, which empowers emergency management and business continuity professionals with real-time collaboration capabilities to make intelligent weather-related decisions, increase response planning lead time and minimize operational downtime.

This innovative weather visualization application combines the best of Earth Networks weather and lightning observation metrics with powerful data representation, real-time broadcasting, and customized alerting capabilities In the offering, which is also mobile-enabled, customers can create custom map layers by pasting GeoJSON onto the map. Customers use this to depict the locations of their critical assets, visualize when weather patterns will intersect with those assets, and setup customized predictive alerts that can be sent to personnel managing those assets.